Abstract:

Abstract enThe reflection has been referred to as inquiry into one’s experience. Reflective activities encourage one’s to analyse their performance. In this context, it can be said reflective thinking had a critical place in education. Reflective thinking, which is be defined as questioning self action when it is happening and then organizing general information by thinking on the self action again, is considered as an important element for the teacher training process. The purpose of this study was to investigate the pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ reflective thinking levels towards mathematics point of view elementary pre-service mathematics teachers’ characteristics. This research was based on a relational survey method which is one of the general survey models. This research was carried out in the spring term of 2013-2014 academic year, all studying at the Marmara University, Education Faculty, Department of Teacher Training in Mathematics at Elementary School Level. The sample of the study consisted of 108 pre-service elementary mathematics teachers at the third year of their four-year mathematics teacher graduate program. To determine the pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ reflective thinking levels, data were collected using the “Reflective Thinking Scale” developed by Kember and his colleagues (2000) and adapted into Turkish by Başol and Gencel (2013). Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of Reflective Thinking Scale was found 0.75. Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and analysis of variance were employed to analyze quantitative data. According to the descriptive result, the average value of the levels of pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ reflective thinking levels towards mathematics was 2.85 (df.:1.46). Results of the study revealed that pre-service elementary mathematics teachers have middle level of reflective thinking skill. According to the results, while there were significant differences in pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ views about reflective thinking levels towards mathematics in terms of the variable of the gender, there were not significant differences in reflective thinking levels towards mathematics in terms of the variables of the pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ education types and highschool the person graduated. According to the results of the data analysis, it was seen that the female pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ reflective thinking levels towards mathematics were significantly higher than male pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’. With regard to research findings, suggestions were offered for future studies by emphasizing the necessity for measures to increase pre-service elementary mathematics teachers’ knowledge on reflective thinking as well as its use

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